Surgery:
Here's my experience of the surgery yesterday:
First yuou go into the hospital, you get all signed in, you show your healthcard and one of the administration fills out some forms. Then you're give your wrist band and sent off to another area.
There you get the wrist band put on and you're given two gowns and a cap. You wear one on the inside backwards and the other one forward like a bath robe.
From there you're asked to wait a bit, and a nurse comes and checks your weight and height and checks some information.
Then you just sit and wait for your time to have surgery. You're taken to the operating room area by the anesthesiologist and the Dr. Fielding (the surgeon). You're asked to wait outside the operating room for a few minutes while the anesthesiologist sits outside and asks you some questions.
Then you're asked to go into the operating room, you're asked to sit up on the operating table and take the gowns off while Dr. Fielding takes a few pictures and draws a few lines on your chest. Then you're asked to lay down while an IV inserted into your hand (this is the only part that hurt during the operation) and your blood pressure is taken.
After then you're given some oxygen to breathe for about 20 seconds, and then they say it's bedtime, youre out in about 3-5 seconds.
Later on you'll wake up after the operation, someone from the operating room will usually come and check up on you and let you know everything went OK. Waking up, my throat felt numb and everything was out of focus, that was probably the effect of tube put down during your throat (you're asleep while the tube is down there) to help you breathe and the anesthetic repsectively. I was given a freezie here to help moisten my throat as it's quite dry when I wake up.
A couple of nurses come and put a tensor wrap on you once you've woken up and you're taken to another waiting area where other recovering patients are. Then whoever was waiting for you is allowed to come in.
You have to say in this room for a while, the nurses check your heart beat, temperature and blood pressure a few times to verify that you aren't having any adverse reactions to the anesthetic and you're given something to drink. Generally they let you go home from here after you aren't feeling as nauseus. Generally a good way to show them that you're all ready to go home is ask to go to the bathroom, if you can walk fine, they'll start prepping you to go home.
You finally get the IV removed and you get to change into your clothes again and you're on your way home!
This day I didn't feel much pain at all if I didn't try to exert myself ( getting up, sitting down, climbing into/out of bed ). I had some minor bleeding just below my arm pits, probably just the excess fluid draining out.
Next day
There's more pain today, I can't notice any swelling, but I feel some burning where my nipples are, assuming it's just from the incisions made there. I took a few T3's and I'm staying relatively still so I'm fine today.
It seems like all of the bleeding's stopped since yesterday night.